Salomon Contemporary is pleased to announce E.V. Day's suspended sculptural works, Cinderella and Mimi-Rigor Mortis, on exhibit at Rosewood Crescent Hotel from March 2 through April 2012. Located in Dallas' Uptown Arts District, the hotel was designed by the renowned architect Philip Johnson and inspired by the glamour of late 19th century Texas.

The sculptures will be on exhibit through the Dallas Art Fair: April 13-15, 2012.

Cinderella is composed of two dresses that symbolize her transformation: a white, cake-like "Princess" dress complete with pearls and panniers, and a dress found on a rack of the costume archive labeled "Distressed Peasant". Ironically, the peasant dress is more a marvel of handiwork and artifice-its luscious cashmere woven to look like burlap, its handmade lace hand-torn and rubbed with ink to look sooty, and its silk velvet corselette punched with holes. The bloated, regal princess dress splits down the back, and the cicada-like, deluxe dishevelment erupts.

Mimi from La Bohème recounts the sad tale of the seamstress Mimi; from her rapturous love for the poet Rodolfo to her tragic demise from a dreaded disease, dying in the freezing cold in the arms of her love. An exquisite example of a bustled Victorian dress in red velvet, Mimi's costume is so architecturally constructed it practically stands on its own. The figure of the unyielding dress, hovering like a headless sleepwalking zombie, seems frozen in the moment she reaches for her lover.

Cinderella and Mimi are from Divas Ascending, a series of 14 suspended sculptures made with costumes from the New York City Opera's archives, a collection comprised of wardrobes from prominent international opera houses. Cinderella's dresses originate from London's Royal Opera House and Mimi, from New York's Metropolitan Opera.

Divas Ascending was first exhibited in the Promenade of the David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center for the 2010 season of the New York City Opera. Presented by Salomon Contemporary and Art Without Walls, the series traveled to the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, Louisville in April 2011. In May 2011, Salomon Contemporary, New York exhibited Butterfly, a work constructed from Cio-Cio San's kimono and Pinkerton's epaulettes. Violetta was on exhibit at Houston Grand Opera from January 27 through February 12, 2012, coinciding with the return of La Traviata to HGO. Three others from the series, Carmen, Merry Widow, and Hats, will also be on view at Southern Methodist University, Dallas in April through September 2012.

E.V. Day received her MFA in sculpture from Yale in 1995. The first sculpture in her Exploding Couture series, Bombshell, was included in the 2000 Biennial of the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is now in the museum's permanent collection. She has had numerous solo exhibitions, including the 2001 installation G-Force at the Whitney Museum at Altria, in which she suspended hundreds of thongs from the ceiling in fighter-jet formations, and a ten-year survey exhibition in 2004 at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University. Bride Fight, Day's spectacular high-tension string-up of two dueling bridal gowns was exhibited at the Lever House in 2006. Day's work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the New York Public Library, the Saatchi Collection, NASA, the Lever House, and numerous private collections.

For further information please contact:
James Salomon: (212) 727-0607 / james@salomoncontemporary.com